#122 “food for thought since 1969″ Reprinting Permissible FREE

Incongruous

Has it seemed odd that I have advocated making a lot of money and have raved about how bad the Profit System is?

I have tried for about 24 years to propagate the Priceless Economic System to the point where people would demand a vote on the PES and then just change-over to it. That seemed like a very simple and easy way to change the world in a non-war fashion. Then we would all stop using money at the same time.

Some people have to get Free before they can believe they were slaves.

People did not seem to understand the PES, so the last few years I’ve changed methods.

I came to the decision that each individual who wants Freedom and Liberty may need to get out of the Rat Race for a while and have the Free time to observe the Profit System from the perspective of a person who is not under the command of the Profit System for his/her immediate survival.

That was how I learned for myself how unfair the Profit System is for 98.6% of the population.

I dropped-out of the PS because of my anger at the government for their Vietnam War. Then I gained 100% Free time. I read all the books I could find on Utopias, good foods and health. I traveled extensively. I observed. I discovered and read underground papers (now called zines). I talked with other people who had created Free time for themselves. I achieved a whole new concept of how the world is run. I could no longer believe what the schools had taught me nor what the mass media had to say each day. The mass media was no longer my Bible!

So a while ago I began to think that perhaps there may not be a short-cut to gain all those new realizations. I can’t expect people to believe my conclusions. They may have to go through steps of gradually learning these radical ideas much as I did.

So I began to show a way out of the Rat Race that has worked for me. There must be several ways to get out and gain the Free time necessary to find out the truth about the Profit System.

My escape route was to accumulate some surplus money. That is, to use the System to change the System! So I try to show people how to beat the system at its own Game. That is, to make yourself as expert as you can about a job to get the highest pay. I suggest thrift and saving. I suggest investing in something you have expertise in and control over. Let your money work for you so that you can retire at a much younger age.

Then in this retired state you will have the leisure to pursue truth. One is always benefited more by truth than by the untruths that are taught in the mass media. The untruths benefit the people who control the mass media.

Hopefully this will explain what may have looked like incongruity to some of my readers.

Anger

Some people are so angry at the slave-masters that they want to kill them. But in reality the slaves should be angry at themselves for being dumb enough to fall for and be part of the Slave System (Profit System). Placing the anger in the correct place, gives us Power! Then we can admit that we were ignorant and that is something that we can change.

“Ignorance is of a peculiar nature; once dispelled, it is impossible to reestablish it. It is not originally a thing in itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant.” Thomas Paine (1791)

Zine Inspiration

Have you ever felt the synergy that exists between zine editors? I read something in another zine and it sometimes sparks an idea. I’ve often felt this inspiration, after reading other zines, when I’ve been discouraged with my PES work. Then I can get back to work on my own writing.

Of course, all zines don’t inspire me. Only a select few are geared to the attempt . . . to make life better for everyone.

8-Ball

How many people do you know that don’t have any money saved up? How many people do you know that have an addiction of one sort or several? Do you know people whose entire checks go to pay their bills? Do you know people whose paychecks are spent before they get them?

Then you know people that may soon be living in the streets, if they lose their jobs and can’t find another job in two months.

Wouldn’t a situation like that keep a family in a lot of anxiety and stress? Is there anything these people could do to escape this stressful situation before it’s too late?

Easiest thing in the world! They just need to chop up their credit cards and focus on getting rid of their debts and in the future always pay with cash or check.

To live on a cash basis they will have to reconsider all of their purchases. See if any purchases are addictions and are unnecessary … maybe even a hindrance to their success.

People who still absorb the masses media are constantly bombarded with urges to buy on credit. Then they usually have to pay a higher price, besides all the interest. That is one reason they are always behind the eight-ball and have no ready cash when a real bargain comes along. So they remain indentured slaves in the Profit System.

The Massa’s media never teaches his slaves how to get Freedom. The Masta’s media is controlled by the Slave-Masters. In order to beat the Game you simply must stop absorbing the mass media.

Let’s face it! We humans are highly “suggestible” creatures. I often notice this trait in myself. I’ll be reading an exciting spy, detective or adventure story where the hero is enjoying a drink or a smoke and the notion crosses my mind that I should run out and buy a bottle or some cigarettes. They got to me! (You don’t suppose that publishers give special preference to authors who include such subtle suggestions? Would the liquor and tobacco industry stoop so low as to offer incentives to publishers?)

Years ago I went to see a French film with English subtitles. I got such a craving that the next day I bought a ticket and flew to France. When I got there I had to ask myself, “What the Hell am I doing here?” I didn’t find France to be as it was portrayed in the movie. But it was a learning. I think we learn a little from our mistakes.

I gave away my TV 24 years ago. I rarely absorb any of the masters’ media (that includes movies). I have no debts and rarely use my credit card. I have a little money in the bank. That is why I was able to buy this mobile home when it appeared on the market for a bargain price. That was why I could pay cash ($5) for those storm windows instead of about $50 if I would have charged them at the hardware store. (A credit card is a charge account.) I can still remember buying on credit when I didn’t have the cash. And I remember that I knew I was paying a higher price.

Masses-Media Divorce

That is one way to get out of the fast lane and start learning to THINK for yourself. You can not trust what the media tells you. You can not trust what anyone (that includes me) tells you until you try it out and see if it works for you. You have tried out credit. Has it given you Freedom?

It is a splendid idea to try out new things often.

Try going to work or to the store by a different route. Every so often you will find a better way.

Walker

I’ve decided to start walking instead of bicycling around our little town. Walking is better exercise. But best of all, it is far easier to stop and talk with someone or look into a dumpster. I was able to enjoy the beautiful cloud display today as I walked.

Yesterday morning on my walk to Coborn’s super-market (They have a deli with free coffee where I usually buy a Danish for 35 cents.) I seen a beautiful energetic little bird fluttering from branch to branch and from tree to tree, stopping just long enough to pick up a bug or something. He was about the size of a sparrow. He had a black colored head with two white stripes and a breast about the color of a robin. He had quite a long beak too. He fluttered around so fast for his breakfast it reminded me of the contrast with the people who refuse to do any fluttering for their breakfast and expect someone else to do their work for them. This includes the rich guys and the people on welfare.

Bag Mann

I heard it was supposed to snow here in a couple of days. I went out and raked up most of my leaves and bagged them. I put 36 bags around the north and west side of my mobile home to insulate a little against the prevailing northwesterly winter winds.

My grandson thought that I was weird because no one else in the trailer park had done it. I told him that there were not very many smart people in this world. He looked a little puzzled as he left for work this morning.

Home Schooled

Grandson was home-schooled in what I thought a hap-hazard way until he was 13 years old. Then he was given some tests. His reading ability was 12th grade level. He was put in the 7th grade here in Little Falls. He passed with high grades and did the same in 8th grade. He did his 9th grade in a California school and attended less than half the time. He failed, but he had taken his G.E.D. test there and passed it. He is now 17 years old and has a job in a LF restaurant.

I had thought it would have been better for him to learn what he could from the school system, but he thought otherwise. I think he has some wisdom that I’m not aware of.

After reading a reprint in LUNO, I have come to believe grandson did the right thing. He has a very strong will of his own.

That reprint, “Nine Assumptions of Schooling” by John Taylor Gatto, really caught my interest. It was about the Swiss educational system and how Switzerland has the highest per capita income and a low percentage of high school and college graduates. The Swiss have a very high number of apprenticeships in both blue and white collar employment.

This guy, Gene Lehman, puts a lot of great stuff in his LUNO zine. It’s well worth the money.

Minneapolis

I drove the 100 miles to Mpls. the other day. I bought 8 O’Clock coffee beans at the Rainbow Foods. They are about half the price of the other coffee company beans. (I grind them fresh for each cup I drink.) I bought spices and grain at the North Country Co-op grocery. (I grind corn or oats each morning that I eat grain, in my Corona hand corn mill that was made in Columbia, S.A.) The co-ops’ prices are about half the price of health food stores. It was started in about 1970. I think North Country was the first “peoples” co-op grocery store in the U.S.A., and now the oldest.

In the Mpls. yellow pages I found four Salvage yards. I visited one and it was a gold mine of used things taken from dismantled houses. I found five storm windows with glass a little larger than what I need for my mobile home. I’ll cut them down to size. The hardware store here wanted $13 for just one piece of glass. This guy said $10 for all five storms. I offered him $5. He came down to $7.50. Then I offered him $5 plus an antique mechanical pencil I had bought for 50 cents at a garage sale. He took my offer and we were both happy. An antique pen dealer had offered me $2 for the pencil. I, needless to say, gave him a copy of the LFP also.

I must go back to that salvage yard and look it over completely to see what treasures are there that I may need some day.

I need a metal return-air-grill for my Coleman gas FA trailer furnace. I may find something I can improvise to fit the 20 3/4″ x 22 7/8″ opening.

Caesar’s Circus

Have you noticed how people are still occupying their thoughts with O.J. Simpson? (Ha! The initals for Orange Juice. Easy to remember, eh?) Was O.J. just an actor hired for this diversion-script? Remember what Caesar said, “Give the people circus and bread and they won’t rebel.” Simpson is a current example. They are still getting millage out of it. I wonder why they needed a public distraction? What were or are they doing that has need for a cover-up?

Is gambling (including lotteries) part of the circus? It keeps people occupied buying and watching to see if they have won and dreaming of all the things they’ll buy and do if they win. But of course, it also helps to keep them broke and in debt so they have to remain slaves.

Letter to the Editor

Dear Ernest,

I don’t relate to some of your new angles on the PES about “negative” music and revolutionary change being bad, undesirable things. Don’t you think these are healthy and even necessary expressions?

Furthermore, you oversimplify when you say, “good guys” vs. “bad guys,” and you oversimplify further when you say “there are not bad guys.” Yes, many are just caught up in a stupid game, but at best a few are purposely compromising and exploiting it, and are certainly to blame. Anyway, I like your newsletter and ideas, and it has been a pleasure to cross your path in Minneapolis. I just wanted to tell you that some of what you see as negative, I see as life affirming. Keep up the good work.

Aaron Cometbus, Box 4726, Berkeley, CA 94704

Editor’s response:

I’m re-reading POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING, by Norman Vincent Peale, which I read about 40 years ago. It is still around in used book racks in Sally stores, Goodwill, etc. I have tried to live by positive thinking. It may be part of the reason I’ve had a pretty good life and was able to retire by the time I was 42. I’ve had very few troubles in my life. I think I can say that this book ranks right along side of the best book that I ever read in my life. (that was not the Bible) This book is easy reading for a believer in God. It is a little more difficult for unbelievers. “God” needs to be read as; subconscious, higher self, essence, central control system or somesuch term for one to learn the POWER over ones life that this book teaches!!!

When we say or hear negative ideas or songs, our subconscious believes whatever it hears. Then it goes about its business of manifesting those things into our life. So we want to be damn careful of what we tell our self or allow a song, or other sources to tell us. Is it wise to allow rap music to implant a hate mood in us?

The rich guys have known for thousands of years how music can be used to make people march to their tune.

Aaron, they are a lot more sophisticated at that trick now. I don’t trust any of the mass media’s music. I trust my own music that I compose as I blow into my little old harmonica. I can blow music that makes me happy or that makes me sad or that makes me feel peppy. Music is a very powerful mind-conditioning force used on everyone who absorbs the mass media. Besides that, they probably have subliminal implants in their music that may be making us believe that we are not slaves and causing us to believe lots of other untruths.

I do agree with you that we need to express our feelings about the bad things that are in the System. And get angry too. That is good. But not to linger and lounge in anger. When we are angry we can’t think and act as efficiently. We need efficiency if we are to change the bad system to a good system. We need to say, “This is a bad system! What can we do now to change it?” From that point on we need to think positive thoughts.

I didn’t say there are good guys and bad guys. You said that. I will agree that there are people who are doing bad things. They are good at playing a bad game, called the Profit Game. You win most at that game by cheating and being mean. They are good at that Game.

I said there is a bad system that will eventually extinct the homo sapiens. I say there is a better system, the PES, which I think, would make life better for all people on this planet. It makes my life better the more I use it.

I don’t see a benefit for the downtrodden to fight in a revolution. They just get killed or crippled. Bloody revolutions have never freed the wage-slaves, it killed them. The rich guys hire poor guys and put a uniform on them and have them kill poor guys, i.e., the revolutionaries. That’s what a revolution is! Poor guys killing poor guys. Does that make sense?

We need to use our brains and create a system where there is no Profit in doing bad things!

If you mean a “Revolution” in the sense of revolving the system around to a better one, then I agree. But first we need to reveal a better system to the people. Show them things that they can do right here and now, within the Profit System to make change in their own life. When each person is living the PES as best he/she can and feeding the Profit System as little as possible . . . it will have to die. When we fight the Profit System we give it energy. It hires more cops. It raises taxes. The reverse is true if we don’t fight it. We change it by creating something better!

Kill!

Some fellows told me that when they were in basic-training for the Korean War they were required to yell together, something like, “Kill, kill, kill! Kill those Gooks!”

Some of the rap tapes I’ve heard make me wonder if they have brought that “Kill-strategy” into civilian life. Could it be more government tactics to arouse the young to start a revolution or is it just getting them primed to make it easier to get enlistments?

I’ve only heard blacks do the Rap Tapes. Are they using blacks as the scapegoats in this Hate-Production? Would it serve yet another purpose … make the whites angry at and fearful of the blacks?

Zine Review

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Arts & Letters

Geonomics is …

one of many words I coined over 20 years ago: geoism, geonomics, geonomy, geocracy, etc – neologisms that later others came up with, too. CNBC once had a Geonomics Show, and Middlebury College has a Geonomics Institute. If “economy” is literally “management of the household”, then geonomy is “management of the planet”. The kind of management I had in mind is not what CNBC was thinking – top-down. My geonomics is not hands-on, interfering, but hands-off, organic. It’d strive to align policy with natural processes, similar to what holistic healing does in medicine, what organic farming does in agriculture. Geonomics attends to two key components: One, the crucial stuff to track is fat — or profit, especially profits without production, such as rent, or all the money we spend on the nature we use. Society’s surplus is the sine qua non for growth, needed to counter death – not merely more, but sustainable development, more from less. Two, the basic process to respect is the feedback loop. These let nature maintain balance automatically and could do the same for markets, if we let them. Letting them would turn our economies, now our masters, into a geonomy, our servant, providing us with prosperity, eco-librium (to coin a term) and leisure, time off — a hostile environment for economan but a cradle for a loving and creative humanity.

a scientific look at how we divvy up the work and the wealth, how some of us end up with too much or too little effort or reward. That’s partly due to Ricardo’s Law of Rent, showing how wasteful use of Earth cuts wages. And it’s partly due to how a society’s elite runs government around like water boys, dishing out subsidies and tax breaks. While geonomists look political reality right in the eye, without blinking, conventional economists flinch. When Paul Volcker, ex-chief of the Federal Reserve, moved on to a cushy professorship at Princeton cum book contract, the crush of deadlines bore down. So Volcker asked a junior associate to help with the book. The guy refused, explaining that giving serious consideration to policy would ruin his academic career. The ex-Fed chief couldn’t believe it and asked the department chair if truly that were the case. That head honcho pondered the question then replied no, not if he only does it once. And economics was AKA political economy!

as unfamiliar as geo-economics. The latter is a course some universities offer that combines geography and economics. A UN newsletter, Go Between (57, Apr/May ’96; thanks, Pat Aller), cited an Asian conference on geopolitics and “geoeconomics”. The abbreviated term ‘geonomics” is the name of an institute on Middlebury College campus and of a show on CNBC. Both entities use the neologism to mean “global economics”, in particular world trade. We use geonomics entirely differently, to refer to the money people spend on the nature they use, how letting this flow collect in a few pockets creates class and poverty and assaults upon the environment, and how, on the other hand, sharing this rental flow creates equality, prosperity, and a people/planet harmony. This flow of natural rent, several trillions dollars in the US each year, shapes society and belongs to society.

a new field of study offered in place of economics, as astronomy replaced astrology and chemistry replaced alchemy. Conventional economics, in which GNP can do well while people suffer, is a bit too superstitious for my renaissance upbringing. If I’m to propitiate unseen forces, it won’t be inflation or “the market”; let it be theEgyptian cat goddess. At least then we’d have fewer rats. Meanwhile, believing in reason leads to a new policy, also christened geonomics. That’s the proposal to share (a kind of management, the “nomics” part) the worth of Mother Earth (the “geo” part). If our economies are to work right, people need to see prices that tell the truth. Now taxes and subsidies distort prices, tricking people into squandering the planet. Using land dues and rent dividends instead lets prices be precise, guiding people to get more from less and thereby shrink their workweek. More free time ought to make us happy enough to evolve beyond economics, except when nostalgic for superstition.

a manual. The world did not come without a way for people to prosper, and the planet to heal and stay well; that way is geonomics. Economies are part of the ecosystem. Both generate surpluses and follow self-regulating feedback loops. A cycle like the Law of Supply and Demand is one of the economy’s on/off loops. Our spending for land and resources – things that nobody made and everybody needs – constitutes our society’s surplus. Those profits without production (remember, nobody produced Earth) can become our commonwealth. To share it, we could pay land dues in to the public treasury (wouldn’t oil companies love that?) and get rent dividends back, a la Alaska’s oil dividend. Doing so let’s us axe taxes and jettison subsidies. Taxes and subsidies distort price (the DNA of exchange), violate quid pro quo by benefiting the well-connected more than anyone else, reinforce hierarchy of state over citizen, and are costly to administer (you don’t really need so much bureaucracy, do you?). Conversely, land dues motivate people to not waste sites, resources, and the ecosystem while rent dividends motivate people to not waste themselves. Receiving this income supplement – a Citizens Dividend – people can invest in their favorite technology or outgrow being “economan” and shrink their overbearing workweek in order to enjoy more time with family, friends, community, and nature. Then in all that free time, maybe we could figure out just what we are here for.

a study of a phenomenon David Ricardo noted going on two centuries ago. When wine grapes rise to $10,000 a ton from the very best land (last year, cabernet sauvignon commanded an average of $4,021 a ton in the Napa Valley), then vineyard prices soar from $18,000 an acre in the 1980′s to $100,000 an acre five years ago and now for a top pedigree up to $300,000 an acre (The New York Times, April 9, via Wyn Achenbaum). Pricey land does not make wine pricey; spendy wine makes land spendy. While vintners make their wine tasty, nature and society in general – not any lone owner – make land desireable. Steve Kerch of CBS’s MarketWatch (April 5) notes that much of what a home sells for on the open market is a reflection of intangible factors such as what school district the house sits in. The price the builder has to pay for the land also tends to be driven by the same intangibles. Because the value of land comes from society, and because one’s use excludes the rest of society, each user owes all others compensation, and is owed compensation by everyone else. Sharing land’s value, instead of taxing one’s efforts, is the policy of geonomics.

a neologism for sharing “rent” or “social surplus” – the money we spend on the nature we use. When we buy land, such as the land beneath a home, we typically pay the wrong person – the homeowner. Instead, since land cost us nothing to make and is the common heritage of us all, rather than pay the owner, we should pay ourselves, our neighbors, our community. That is, we should all pay land dues to the public treasury, then our government would pay us land dividends from this collected revenue. It’s similar to the Alaska oil dividend, almost $2,000 last year. Indeed, the annual rental value of land, oil, all other natural resources, including the broadcast spectrum and other government-granted permits such as corporate charters, totals several trillion dollars each year. It’s so much that some could be spent on basic social services, the rest parceled out as a dividend, as Tom Paine suggested, and taxes (except any on natural rents) could be abolished, as Thomas Jefferson suggested. Were we sharing Earth by sharing her worth, territorial disputes would be fewer, less intense, and more resolvable.

a POV that Spain’s president might try. A few blocks from my room in Madrid at a book fair to promote literacy, Sr Zapatero, while giving autographs and high fives to kids, said books are very expensive and he’d see about getting the value added tax on them cut down to zero. (El Pais, June 4; see, politicians can grasp geo-logic.) But why do we raise the cost of any useful product? Why not tax useless products? Even more basic: is being better than a costly tax good enough? Our favorite replacement for any tax is no tax: instead, run government like a business and charge full market value for the permits it issues, such as everything from corporate charters to emission allowances to resource leases. These pieces of paper are immensely valuable, yet now our steward, the state, gives them away for nearly free, absolutely free in some cases. Government is sitting on its own assets and needs merely to cash in by doing what any rational entity in the economy does – negotiate the best deal. Then with this profit, rather than fund more waste, pay the stakeholders, we citizenry, a dividend. Thereby geonomics gets rid of two huge problems. It replaces taxes with full-value fees and replaces subsidies for special interests with a Citizens Dividend for people in general. Neither left nor right, this reform is what both nature lovers and liberty lovers need to promote, right now.

a way to have everybody pulling on the same end of the rope. Last summer’s expansive forest fires shed light on growing class resentment in the West. Old log-gers and ranchers rankled at the new urgency to stamp out the blazes that threatened the recent Aspenesque settlers. The newcomers expected working class firemen to make protecting their expensive homes top priority. (Chr Sci Mntr, Spt 7) The tinder for this envy? Rich people moving in bid up the price of land, making it hard to afford by people on the margin. The fault really lies with our system of privatizing land value. If this rising value were collected by land dues and shared by rent dividends – the essence of geonomic policy – who’d complain? The more people move in, the higher the land value, and the fatter the dividend paid to residents. Then people on the margin might go out of their way to invite rich outsiders in.

a scientific look at how we divvy up the work and the wealth, how some of us end up with too much or too little effort or reward. That’s partly due to Ricardo’s Law of Rent, showing how wasteful use of Earth cuts wages. And it’s partly due to how a society’s elite runs government around like water boys, dishing out subsidies and tax breaks. While geonomists look political reality right in the eye, without blinking, conventional economists flinch. When Paul Volcker, ex-chief of the Federal Reserve, moved on to a cushy professorship at Princeton cum book contract, the crush of deadlines bore down. So Volcker asked a junior associate to help with the book. The guy refused, explaining that giving serious consideration to policy would ruin his academic career. The ex-Fed chief couldn’t believe it and asked the department chair if truly that were the case. That head honcho pondered the question then replied no, not if he only does it once. And economics was AKA political economy!